


The Strangest Feeling

by lextenou



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bounty Hunter Emma Swan, Evil Queen | Regina Mills as Roni, F/F, Lesbian Emma Swan, Past Lives, Queer Culture, Remembering Past Lives as Dreams, Roni's Bar (Once Upon a Time)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-03 15:17:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15821544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lextenou/pseuds/lextenou
Summary: Emma Swan has been having the oddest dreams for as long as she can remember. They always feature herself and a nameless, faceless woman. Someone she's always with but never knows once she wakes up.Today, she'll meet her dream woman.Maybe this time, they'll actually be able to get it right.





	The Strangest Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [not our first time around [Fanart]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795753) by [em_jaied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_jaied/pseuds/em_jaied). 



Emma Swan stared at the smooth painted ceiling of her six hundred fifty square foot studio apartment. Sunlight reflected from the passing cars, stories below, refracted through the windows and casting a diaspora against the broad white expanse of her ceiling, broken by one row of recessed light fixtures. She watched the ceaselessly repeating patterns from her couch, reclined against the cushions in an ungainly sprawl. Her boots were discarded at the side of the couch, her socked feet shoved partially beneath a throw pillow. 

She wasn't sure why she had throw pillows, other than that they'd come with the couch. Her chest rose and fell in steady rhythm, her focus on the filling and emptying of her lungs, restoring the balance to her mind and unsettled soul. 

Working that day had been easy enough. A quick in and out and she submitted her hours, returning home to relax on the couch. Early morning calls tended to come with days that stretched too long, tangling in the unresolved memories and unfinished business of life. Naps, or just dozing on the couch, had always been a vice of particular enjoyment, a representation of having the self determination to decide what she wanted to do and doing it. 

When she was twelve years old, she dreamed she was a pirate. She sailed the seven seas, plundering and pillaging with determination and intensity the likes of which had rarely been seen. The ship was small, agile and nimble over the deep blue of the never-ending sea. Her crew was small as well, a handful of sailors loyal to her that followed her without question. And next to her, a lithe figure. All she could determine was dark eyes that judged and a smirk that came with biting comments. 

She'd passed it off as watching too much Queen of Swords and reading Alice in Wonderland. 

It wasn't so easy to dismiss the one where she'd been in some kind of weird cult. The center of the cult had been this weirdly smarmy guy who resembled a bug eyed chicken and went on about the messages from beyond the veil and how those who had ascended were still amongst those still trapped within their flesh prisons. At one point, they'd been standing around a table, hands resting on the top. A mesmerist was talking to them, some faker from the past telling them the table was alive with a rich spiritual energy that would channel through them. 

Of that dream, Emma remembered most the feel of a warm hand beneath her own, their fingers splayed. Her forefinger and middle finger had been worn with a depression at the first knuckles - from a pen, an elusive memory whispered, providing her with the brief sense memory of knowing what that firm cylinder felt like within her grasp. That spot had been the perfect place for the forefinger of her companion to rest. She'd looked up into a warm gaze before everything had disappeared into a dizzying blast of sensation and sound. 

What had stuck with her afterward was that phantom sensation of a pen and finger against the first knuckle of her middle finger. She found herself rubbing her thumb against it absently for days afterward. 

She still did it sometimes.

Rising from the couch, she stretched, her joints popping and muscles relaxing from the tension of sleeping on cushions not designed to provide proper lumbar support. She rolled her head against her shoulders, stretching the tensed muscles. 

The cult had been an odd one, especially the abrupt ending. She remembered her ears filling with too much sound to process, her eyes flooding with a brightness that dazzled, and a sudden loss of any sensation whatsoever. It didn't make any sense. Neither had the affection she felt for the woman next to her. 

One ritual had them raise their hands to the sky, casting incantations to a darkened and unfeeling expanse under the edict of the leader of their cult. They had usually ended up standing next to each other, sometimes ordered to be so, sometimes not. Something about how they worked together and supported those around them, the leader had said a time or two. It was one of the few things said during that dream that she remembered clearly. 

She moved to the kitchen with steps muffled by her socks and the thick rugs that dotted the hardwood laminate of her floor. It wasn't the best of apartments, but it was certainly classy enough to justify the exorbitant price. Then again, it was Hyperion Heights. It wasn't like she was truly offered a chance at a decent place that wasn't microscopic. 

Not like the dream where they'd been on a grand estate. She'd been cast in the role of some kind of horse expert, which had been odd given that she'd never had a chance to be around them. She remembered the feel of the wind whipping across her cheeks and through her hair as she put a stallion through his paces, drawing him to a calm trot before a slim woman in deep mourning attire. The broad swath of blackness was cut by a bright white linen, though her head remained uncovered. Downright scandalous. 

They had ridden together, Emma and this nameless, faceless woman who bantered with her and called to her recklessness. She had given heed to the latter impulse when goaded, and went sailing over a low fence meant to hold the cows from wandering too far afield. When she sought to follow, her companion had been thrown ass over teakettle from her mount. 

The memory of seeing that woman flying headlong through the air drove her thoroughly to distraction and had arrested her heart in her chest. It had not felt like she could breathe properly until she'd helped her companion back to her feet, apologies dripping from her freely. Her words had stopped as the woman turned to her, her dark eyes clouded with a brief pain that shook free quickly. Emma had held her for long moments, her enquiries after good health answered with a quick shake of the head. 

She had not been able to tear herself away. She stood there, holding the woman like an idiot, staring at her. Tension lined her gut with flutters and she had leaned forward slightly, intent on closing the distance between them. 

That particular dream had been rudely interrupted by a terribly timed phone call. 

The dreams had been irregular occurrences over the years, some continuing from where they left off, others only coming through once before disappearing. They always featured the same woman, though always in different attire. It was the feel of her eyes, how she moved, how her body felt pressed against Emma's, these details that drove Emma to distraction and remained as phantasms in her mind long after the dreams had ended.

She released a long slow breath and pulled down a glass. Retrieving the Brita from the fridge, she poured a glass before setting the contraption beneath the faucet to refill. As she watched the water cascade, she grimaced. 

There had been one where she'd been dropped into the dream with a sudden stab wound to the stomach. They had been in the middle of a forest, and she'd been attired in flowing white robes. She remembered looking down at herself and wondering why in the hell she'd been wearing something not at all stealthy. Super smart, that. The robes reminded her of that one show she'd briefly caught with aliens from across the galaxy. Unlike that show, she'd been all to vulnerable to physical harm, as the welling darkness of blood against her stomach had attested. 

A scream had sounded next to her and she had reached out blindly, her hands circling around a roughly bearded neck and twisting sharply. The man that had attacked her fell before her and she stumbled backward, dislodging the knife and allowing blood to flow freely from her wound. Noises filled her ears, nonsensical ramblings and pleas invoking names she'd never heard before. 

Callused hands pressed firmly against the wound, gathering part of her robe and pressing it against the wound. She could identify in the back of her head that it wouldn't be long before she bled out, not with how likely it was that her liver had been nicked. It was deeply painful, the depth of burning in her gut nearly driving her out of her mind. She looked up at the furiously teary face of the woman that haunted her. 

Words had breathed out of her, quiet declaration that caused the woman above her to shake her head, denying the shaky promises that were coming too quickly, too soon in their time together. 

_We did it. We will do it again. I will give you your happy ending._

Sobbing denials, pleas that no, no you're my happy ending, you can't, I need you - they were the last lingering traces she clung to before she'd woken on the couch. Broken sorrow had suffused that dulcet voice, raspy from the screaming and crying. 

They'd been on the run. Hadn't they? Trying to escape a fate worse than death for them both. Seeking to allow them to live in a manner that should be allowable in those dark times. Surrounded by war and machinations, they had sought more and been cruelly brought up short. Some form of curse had been flung at them, hadn't it? Some incantation she couldn't place her finger on, something about bringing them together just to tear them asunder. 

Emma rubbed her face. Feeling yourself slowly die was not a dream that she would wish upon anyone. 

She set her glass down in the sink and turned to the pantry. Glancing through it, she frowned. No bottles sat there to greet her. She turned back to the fridge to confirm - no beer. She sighed. She should have planned ahead. 

It generally went the same way, when she could. The dreams came. They lingered. Incessant tracing along her nerves that drove her to madness. To find respite, she could attempt to exhaust herself - the hunt served well for that - or she could seek to numb herself. As she was currently free of any contracts, it didn't stand to reason that she'd be able to go on a hunt and find peace that way. No, she was left with the more mundane and presently impossible recourse of crawling into a bottle. 

Glancing at the clock, she caught the blinking lights. Gods above, was it truly only just two o'clock in the afternoon? She'd barely laid her head down at just past ten that morning after three days of chasing the last contract. 

Dashing a hand through her hair, Emma made a decision. There would be nothing for it. She would have to journey out to fetch more liquor. Something hard, maybe. But first, some initial numbing of her thoughts would be welcome. Perhaps that hole in the wall on the next block? Or didn't they only open after four. Maybe the one three blocks over then. She'd heard tell that the place was quickly becoming the new hotness for the local gayborhood. 

Then again, it only took one person complaining - on drag night, no less - that men didn't belong in women's bathrooms to get the owner to declare all bathrooms gender neutral, all the time. Emma had laughed mightily to overhear that particular bitching in the coffee shop the other day. The ranter had been particularly uninventive. 

She'd immediately added the bar to her list of "must visit" places.

She had an extensive list of constantly rotating "must visit" places. That one particular hot dog stand near the park was a definite plus to maintaining that list. The place with the lumpy potato soup was not. The belgian waffle food truck? Worth beyond words.

She glanced down at herself and grimaced, tugging her heavily wrinkled shirt off over her head. Halfway looking, she tossed it in the general direction of her hamper. No crashes sounded from behind her as she entered the bathroom so she was fairly certain her aim hadn't been entirely off. The cool tile beneath her feet grounded her firmly back within her body and she tried to shake off the sensation of a fantasy life slowly bleeding from her body. Turning on and adjusting the water to the correct temperature did not take long, nor did fastening her hair up in a loose bun to keep it free from the water. 

Cascading water flowed over her naked form and she released another measured breath. Growing up as she had, it had always been a problem for her to control her temper. Probably a big reason why she did so well at her job, violent as it was. It helped to keep her grounded. For the most part, at least. 

She could really have done with another contract. Unfortunately, she'd cleared the board so she wasn't likely to get any new nibbles until the following week. 

The sweetly clean fragrance of her soap filled the bathroom and she inhaled its scent gratefully. The lingering dream memory of the tang of her own blood had filled her nostrils and she ached for the cleansing. 

A big part of what bothered her so deeply about these dreams was the lingering effects. When it was touch, it wasn't as bad. The feel of her dream woman's hand in her own, a thumb caressing the back of her hand, that hadn't been so bad. The phantom pain of being stabbed? The smell of her own blood? Those she could do without. 

Rinsing, she shook her head to clear her thoughts from the mire they had fallen into. Dwelling overmuch on her dreams would do no good. She had to go pretend to be a functional adult. 

Drying off, she walked over to her closet naked as a jaybird, enjoying the still air within her apartment. She selected her clothing and pulled it on quickly, the rough cotton of her jeans softened by years of washings and the gentle softness of her black turtleneck cladding her in her chosen armor. 

She could haul out a leather jacket but the crisp fall air had yet to reach levels requiring that sort of protection against the chill. 

Besides, she didn't know what kind of clientele she could expect in an untested bar at just after 2pm on a weekday. Could be good. Could be bad. 

She locked her door and made the walk over. The sun broke through the clouds briefly, nearly blinding as it reflected off of the parked cars on either side of the street. Emma shoved her hands in her pockets and continued past the short spot of outrageously bright sunlight. A breeze curled around the side of her neck, sending a shiver along her spine as she turned the corner. Behind her, tires screeched and a horn blasted, before curse laden yelling sounded. She rolled her eyes at the near car crash and looked up at the sign above the entrance. 

Roni's Bar.

"Family Welcome" was blazoned across the window of the door in broad swaths of artistic rainbow stripes. Emma braced herself and pushed open the door. 

Crashing cymbals and pounding drums wended beneath looping guitar as Corin Tucker screamed in primal emotional release. Emma blinked and glanced around the bar. Along the far wall was a broad collection of flags, many of which she recognized and many others that she didn't. It looked like every incarnation was represented behind a shallow display case, the glass painted with broad strokes declaring "ALL ARE WELCOME". On the wall adjacent, a small collection of posters and albums were displayed. The signed and framed poster of Siouxsie Sioux was next to a framed Dead Kennedy's single that declared in a blood red scrawl, "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!"

Apparently Roni, whoever she was, was a big fan of the punk sensibility. 

The jukebox finished the Sleater-Kinney song with a clatter and kicked to the next track. Kathleen Hanna screamed over the driving beat as the classic Bikini Kill track "Rebel Girl" filled the air. 

A smile quirked Emma's mouth and she stepped in fully from the doorway and toward the bar. 

Bold decoration, inclusivity that drew on decades of rights movements and riot grrl on the jukebox? 

Emma may have just found her new favorite spot. 

Her hand splayed against the clean bartop as she slid up onto a stool. The bartender had only partially noticed her come in, the music loud enough right near the door to drown out any hellos she might have made. Nearer to the bar, the volume lowered significantly. 

"Hey."

The bartender pulled herself free from the large cooler she'd been wiping down, her loose flannel shirt tucked firmly into her jeans. The shirt was cut away from her shoulders, exposing the smooth line of them to the mildly chill air within the bar. Her rich brown hair hung in loose waves around her welcoming expression.

"Welcome to Roni's. What can I get you?" 

Emma looked at her for a breath before blinking, firmly not allowing her gaze to lower to catch the open buttons over the bartender's chest. "Uh, got a menu? This is my first time." She crossed her arms on the bar and leaned forward with a sheepish smile.

"First time and you made it all the way in?" The light teasing of the bartender's voice hinted at what she meant, making Emma laugh.

"First time in this place. I've been in lots of others before." She glanced over to the wall of flags, spying one that looked like the bi flag with a black sideways triangle on one side. She had no idea what that one meant. "None of them are quite as aggressively inclusive as this one."

The bartender laughed. "Beers are listed on the board if you don't recognize the taps. Standard drinks. Happy hour from two to five. Tonight's Skirt Night. Anyone wearing a skirt gets two dollar draft, well and wine." The bartender raised her eyebrow with a grin. "Anyone."

Emma laughed, shaking her head. "Not much for skirts on my downtime. They get in the way."

The bartender tilted her head, taking in Emma's appearance. "I'd do a suit night but we're too close to idiots for me to be willing to hire the number of bouncers I'd need to run the creeps off of my regulars."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "You're the owner?"

The bartender laughed, waving her hand dismissively as she pulled a glass free from the stack. "Yep. You like ambers? You look like a draft kind of woman."

"Sure. Anything's good." In short order, the foam topped glass slid in front of her and she took a sip of the deeply caramelized brew. Her eyebrow raised at the nuance that exploded on her tongue. "Remind me to be pickier with my beer in the future. This is damned good."

"Glad you like it. You from around here?" The bartender resumed her cleaning of the wide fridge, her bar mop cleaning the beaded water from the smooth metal sides. 

"Yeah, I've been in the neighborhood for a bit now. Nice place." She continued sipping at her beer, the flavor continuing to deepen as the brew slowly warmed. "When did this place open?"

The bartender hummed and stood upright, tossing the rag from one hand to the other. "Must be a year and a half now. Still going strong, thankfully. It was touch and go there for a minute when we started Drag Night, but hey, love wins." The bartender gave a lopsided grin and tossed the rag at an open bucket at the end of the bar. It landed with a solid firmness that had Emma raising an eye at the bartender's aim. 

Then the slight woman hip checked the broad fridge and it slid smoothly into place back beneath the bar. Adjusting it slightly, the bartender left Emma to her drink before returning with a five gallon bucket filled with ice. She couldn't see the bartender's forearms very well, but she could see her shoulders as she hefted the bucket and tipped it into the fridge. She sipped at her beer, watching steadily as the muscle bunched and flexed before slowly releasing as the load lightened. 

Clearing her throat, Emma shifted on her stool. "Thank you for the beer. It's really good." Her eyes lowered to the bartop so she wouldn't stare at the bartender further. It was beyond rude to do so, not to mention there was nothing to say that the bartender was gay just because she had opened a gay bar. 

A hand swept into her line of vision. She blinked. Those fingers were familiar, but she couldn't place them. She raised her head and met the bartender's gaze directly. "The name's Roni, by the way." The bartender, Roni, grinned. "In case you couldn't tell from the signage."

Emma swallowed and slid her own hand out to grasp the offered one. "Emma. Glad to meet..."

Her voice died in her throat as their hands slid together into a firm handshake. The press of those callused fingers was familiar. Those eyes that twinkled across the bar from her were familiar. Everything about this moment hung heavily with familiarity and strangeness as images swirled in her mind. 

The cult. The weird white robes. The pirates. The PTA meetings. Standing in the dock accused of witchcraft. Running through the forest for their lives, panting heavily as dogs barked all too closely on their heels. Through it all, the woman before her at her side, holding hands, egging her on, declaring her friendship, declaring her love all too infrequently. 

The scene of them as pirates re-emerged in her mind, the thick accented words of her companion lashing out over the crew and calling them to task for failing at their appointed assignments. Over and over again, the two of them entering into battle and emerging, if not victorious, then at the least they usually emerged unscathed. 

The cult swam before her eyes, and she recalled how they had curled together in the darkness and whispered secrets to one another long after lights out. Free love had been encouraged, but only between men and women. Her companion had been highly sought after by many, all too many, until that moment of blinding light and sound that now was tinged with an overwhelming pressure. It was only then that Emma realized the burst of sensation had been a bomb of some sort, most likely right near them. 

She remembered standing before her people and declaring that her rule had been stolen from her, that she would stand for it no longer, that she would seek recompense. The affront to her noble line would not be allowed to stand! Then the betrayal, the running through the forest, the hotly hissed words declaring them accursed in the eyes of the gods for all eternity, long past any time when the gods would be forgotten, past life, past death. 

She drew in a shaky breath and winced, the faded memory of the stab to her stomach coming back to the forefront. She blinked to clear her vision and lowered her gaze to the bartop once again. Her hand was no longer clutched in that of the woman that had haunted her dreams for so long. She sat, alone on the stool, in the middle of a bar at just before three in the afternoon on a weekday, and shuddered from the flood of memory that washed over her. 

"Regina..." The soft whispered name emerged from her, broken and small. 

"I'm here." A warm hand slid across her back and she turned on her stool, stunned to find the woman, her woman, standing next to her. The shock must have shown clearly on her face if the expression on the face of the woman before her was any indication. "I'm right here."

Emma leaned forward, her hands rising to cup the woman's face. To cup Roni's - no, Regina's - face. 

"I thought I'd lost you." 

Regina's hands fisted in Emma's turtleneck, pulling their bodies flush. "Never again if I can help it." One hand pressed flat against Emma's back. "Never again."

Emma's thumb brushed a tear that had leaked from Regina's eye, the slightest of smiles curving her lips. "I fo-"

Regina's fingers dug into Emma's back with clawed ferocity. "If you finish that sentence, I will strike you down right here and we will have to do this whole thing again. Don't you _dare_."

The wet chuckle that filled the air had a slightly hysterical tinge. "Fuck. Regina." Her voice was pleading, her fingers soft against the dampened cheeks of the glaring woman before her. She leaned forward, her forehead resting against Regina's. "I thought you were a dream."

"I couldn't - didn't..." Regina's voice faltered and she released a shuddering breath. "Emma." Her voice held a beleaguered plea, as bereft as the one that Emma had given. 

Slowly, quietly, Emma leaned in the final bit and pressed her lips to Regina's. With a whimpered sigh, she relaxed into the press of their lips, firm in the knowledge that she had finally discovered the missing piece to everything. 

That was when the magic exploded out from them. 

Broad swaths of rainbow tinged magic radiated from them, pulsing through the entirety of the bar and beyond, suffusing the entirety of Hyperion Heights and transforming it entirely. Throughout the city, people stopped, stumbled, crashed into one another as memories shifted and broke, reforming to restore them to the people they had been. Those that had allied with the pair in the empty bar found themselves suddenly reborn anew in a world far removed from that which they had experienced before, flung across time and space to an odd world with odder entrapments that they knew intimately how to operate. 

One man in his bath raised a trembling hand to his face, feeling his beard as though for the first time. When last he'd known himself, he had not been as he was, but had been a handmaiden to the entwined pair. Silent tears tracked down his face. 

Upstairs from the bar, a door flung open and a clattering of rushed steps resounded before a locked door beyond the bathrooms burst open. 

"REGINA!"

The shouted name drew them apart, but only just. Turning their heads, they looked at the woman who had burst into the room, the red stripe in her hair askew denoting that she'd been awoken from a nap. 

"Hey, Rubes."

"What the - is that Emma?!"

Regina laughed, her arms wrapped around the waist of the woman before her, her soul giddy from the realization of what she had finally found. "Yes."

Glancing back and forth between them, Ruby's face split into a wide grin. "Your mom is gonna _freak_. Can I tell her?"

"Hell no. If that hell beast wants back in my life she can apologize like I've told her to do for the last ten years." Emma's fingers brushed lightly against the curve of Regina's neck, sending a shiver through the standing woman. "Besides, I'm going to be busy tonight, you're on." 

Ruby shot her a look filled with confusion before it cleared and she waved her hand in front of her face as though warding off a bad smell. "OH! Ew! Ew! God no!" 

With a few final orders to her first employee, Regina turned back to Emma, who had remained quiet throughout. "Would you like to come up and talk? I think we've got a lot to discuss."

Emma smiled at the offer. "I'd like that."

Reluctant to release one another, they made their way upstairs with their hands clasped, much like they had since time immemorial. This time, however, bore with it altogether different connotations that they had not embraced for far too long. Emma glanced over at Regina, taking in the curve of the woman's rear in her tight jeans. A quick, fleeting and self satisfied smile darted across her face. 

When they reached the small apartment upstairs, Emma took in the cozy space. Decorated with more of the same pride and riot grrl decorations as the bar below, the furniture was well cared for and appeared comfortable. One of the arms of the couch was covered with clothing which Regina hefted and tossed behind a door, a quick "Ruby's, mine's in the back," sufficing to explain the layout of the place. 

Regina gestured to the couch and Emma relaxed into it before accepting the bottle of water that Regina offered to her. The brush of their fingers sent a shiver down Emma's spine. She took a swig of water and picked at the label for a long moment.

"I spent a lot of time not knowing who you were when we were together." Regina was staring at the toes of her boots, her voice soft. "Even when we were together, I didn't know. Even when there were," her fingers flicked in the air dismissively, "others, it was always you. How could I not know?" The last was whispered.

Emma cleared her throat. "I thought I was going half crazy from these dreams. I've been remembering you for years." She looked down at her hands, wrapped around her water bottle. "It had to be dreams. Because if they weren't, I'd be crazy."

Regina set down her water bottle and turned toward Emma, her hand cupping Emma's cheek. "Then I guess we have a shared madness, because I remember you too." The air in the apartment was quiet, the music from the bar below so heavily muffled as to be the barest whisper. Her eyes dipped to Emma's lips. "What's that Shakespeare line? Give me my madness again?"

Emma laughed and leaned forward, pressing a brief kiss to her remembered love. "What happened?" She turned her head. "Wait, how does Ruby remember me? I've never met her before."

Regina shifted, shoving Emma back against the couch before swinging a leg over her lap and settling atop Emma's thighs. Emma swallowed at the deft handling and solid weight on top of her. 

"Do you remember a time when you were in white and I was in black?" Regina leaned forward, her face mere inches from Emma's. "And you stood up all idiotic and noble and declared you'd get your birthright back?"

Emma swallowed. It was thoroughly not at all fair for Regina to exploit Emma's not at all latent lesbianism in this manner. "When I was stabbed?"

"Mm. The assassin you killed was one of two. The second talked a lot more." Regina's head tilted, placing her lips a mere breath away from Emma's. "We were cursed then, Emma. To never be together the way we had been, the way we wanted. The longer we were together, the more violently we would meet our end to be torn apart again." Regina's fingers threaded through Emma's hair. "I didn't disappear the last time. After the PTA meeting when...you said..." Regina released a shuddering breath. "My husband murdered me."

Emma swallowed. "Oh."

"You loved me then, didn't you?" Regina's thumb traced over Emma's lower lip. "That was what my husband kept yelling at me. About how we were sinners and unnatural and he'd eliminate us. I didn't know then what he was talking about." Regina met Emma's eyes directly. "But I do now." 

"Yes." Emma could not look away from Regina's full lipped mouth. "Yes, I loved you then. I loved you more than I ever loved anyone." 

Regina hummed, low in her throat. "And you're here now." She glanced down between their bodies and raised her heated gaze with a lascivious grin. "Beneath me."

Emma's hands flexed against Regina's hips. "Uh...yes. Yes, I am."

Regina's hand fisted in Emma's hair and a low growl sounded. "You are mine."

Emma surged upward, her arms wrapping around Regina's waist to hold her steady, an answering growl rising from the depths of her being. "Mine."

The rest was left by the wayside as two lost souls, doomed for millennia to circle one another, came back together in soft touches and quietly murmured declarations. Decades of stymied desires found fruition and through it all, one thing rang with a simple truth through every touch and sigh. 

Love wins.


End file.
